Oh the je ne sais quoi of the French, at least when it comes to a weirdly wonderful film screening in Paris on Wednesday of Ang Lee’s watery Life of Pi.

Audience members were literally immersed in the spirit of the movie – about a young Indian man shipwrecked in the ocean with a Bengal tiger – by watching the film, in 3-D, from lifeboats in Paris’ Piscine Pailleron indoor swimming pool.

Check out more photos from the event – itself reminiscent of a sweetly quirky French New Wave film – below, plus a video set to tunes by Sigur Ros and Coldplay on how the ambitious premiere was pulled off, from boats being pushed into the pool to a red carpet rolled out next to the pool to fashionable Parisian audience members brightly proclaiming “magnifique!”